1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for the preparation of derivatives of polymers having functional groups by means of activating reagents, the use of such activating reagents for the preparation of the derivatized polymers, and the use of these polymers as receptors for substrate binding.
2. Related Art
Polymers which are derivatized with defined radicals are suitable for very different types of chemical applications and industrial applications. Accordingly, there is a great need, especially, for those polymers which are derivatized with radicals which are made-to-measure for appropriate areas of use.
A process which can be employed broadly and in variable form is therefore of great value for the reaction of polymers carrying functional groups with reagents which are already suitably configured and which have already been designed in a goal-oriented manner before the reaction with respect to the later area of use. With such a rational polymer design, it is then possible to prepare, i.e. make to measure, polymers having the necessary and desirable properties, in a simple manner.
Those derivatized polymers are of particular importance in which specific interactions can be achieved between the radicals and substrates introduced via the derivatization, which are brought into contact with the polymer derivatives. By means of the route of rational polymer design, selective, indeed even specific interactions, which can already be planned before the polymer derivatization, between the receptor group, i.e., for example, between the radical(s) introduced into the polymer via the derivatization or some of this (these) radical (radicals), and the substrates can be achieved.
In order to equip polymers having functional groups with such receptor groups, as a rule until now only three routes have been proposed, which are listed in M. Antonietti, S. Heinz, Nachr. Chem. Tech. Lab. 40 (1992) No. 3, pp. 308-314. According to this publication, such derivatized polymers are obtainable via random polymerization or copolymerization, via the preparation of block copolymers and via the preparation of surface-functionalized polymer particles. These preparation routes start from derivatized monomers from which the polymer is obtained. For many application areas, i.e., for example, for many desired polymer derivative-substrate interactions, these derivatized monomers, however, cannot be prepared or can only be prepared with an industrially and economically unacceptable outlay.
A further possibility for derivatizing polymers is polymer-analogous reaction of polymers having functional groups, with derivatizing compounds. In these cases, however, it has until now not been possible or only been possible with extremely great difficulty to introduce, by reaction of, for example, polar polymers having functional groups, radicals of interest for the application into the polymer in such a way that soluble derivatives are formed which can be processed further in a correspondingly simple manner in possibly subsequent processes.
Because of the different kind of objective, polymer derivatizations have been carried out until now, for example, on solid surfaces, i.e. the reactions were carried out heterogeneously. This group includes, inter alia, carrier activation and carrier immobilization, in which a nucleophilic substance is customarily bonded heterogeneously to a polymer, for example epoxy polyacrylic ester or BrCN-sepharose (for this see P. Mohr, M. Holtzhauer, G. Kaiser, Immunosorption Techniques, Fundamentals and Applications, Akademie Verlag, Berlin (1992), pp. 34-40).
The preferred embodiments of the present invention provide a process for the preparation of a derivative of a polymer having at least one functional group, wherein the process comprises the following step (i):
(i) reacting a polymer having at least one functional group, with at least one activating reagent or a derivative of an activating reagent in a homogeneous phase.
The preferred embodiments of the present invention also provide a derivative of a polymer having at least one functional group, preparable by a process which comprises the following step (i):
(i) reacting the polymer having at least one functional group, with at least one activating reagent or a derivative of an activating reagent in a homogeneous phase. The preferred embodiments of the present invention also provide derivative of a polymer having at least one functional group, preparable by a process which comprises the following step (i):
(i) reacting the polymer having at least one functional group, with at least one activating reagent or a derivative of an activating reagent in a homogeneous phase.